the time before the end
by melmel12129
Summary: he dies before she can love him and he can tell her. — yuu x juri


**hey, y'all. read this awesome depressing piece of work: watashitachi no shiawase na jikan. i'm so obsessed. I can't say how much. too much. it's only eight chapters, seriously, try it. in eight chapters you get so attached to the characters you don't want anyone to die. i had fun writing this and all i can say is that juri doesn't entirely know if she loves yuu yet, but she suspects so. she wants time to fall in love with him, not just decide she is. and she's regretful because she didn't get the time to fall in love with him, because he's a great person and she knows it. **

**anyways, i don't own the too-long-manga-name called "our happiest time" or "our happy hour".**

**enjoy**

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It's not fair that he has to die.

Yuu is a good person - Warden Inoue knows, Aunt Monica knows, even she knows. He doesn't deserve to die. Maybe before he would have wanted it a few months ago - but while it's such a short time, she still cannot imagine her life without him in it. She lets out a choked sob and smooths out her hair. She doesn't want tears to ruin her makeup. She needs this to be perfect.

The door handle rattles and she gulps, sitting down in front of the dusty, untouched piano. Years worth of memories inundate her mind, overwhelming her for a second before she controls herself again (she's found a good way to control her fear - take two deep breaths, count to ten and imagine Yuu's face). Even after all these years she still has that same irrational fear. Every touch of the keys from the time she started practicing last week to today has pained her, but she thinks it's worth it.

She silently composes herself as the door finally creaks open and they enter - the guards with the condemned criminal in tow; and she thinks she's never seen such a defeated sight in her life. She forces herself to look down at the keys even when she knows he'll be looking up at her in surprise.

"Juri," he breathes, in a such a tone it makes her want to cry.

Her nose burns with a familiar sensation but her past tells her, _'Push those tears down - no one cares about them. Useless.' _So her instincts kick in and she suppresses the urge to cry. Her long elegant fingers stroke the keys and she begins to play, filling the melody with her emotion. It starts out dark and stormy, like her emotions before she met Yuu.

It changes gradually - confused a bit and rumbly and she plays this in a harmonic minor. At some point she doesn't even know when it starts but she begins to deviate from the original tune and create a new one of her own; because Yuu deserved - deserves it (he's not dead yet - he's not dead yet!). Yuu doesn't speak, just watches her with a wonder-filled yet wary tone, no doubt remembering his own memories from her piano playing. He remembers his brother and feels nostalgia - remembers his death and feels anger - remembers his crime and feels remorse.

But it's too late, because he's about to die - so he doesn't particularly _care _about these emotions anymore. They mean nothing to him and they are part of an about to be erased past.

She thinks about her drawings, and her in a white lacy wedding dress with flowers, and about Yuu and what he said about her in a white lacy wedding dress with flowers, and Aunt Monica, and her mom, and the piano, and, and she...before she knows it the piece is over and she is beginning her final ascension. She does not know when it was supposed to end but it feels like the right time. Inside she screams that it cannot possibly be time - that she should keep on playing to keep him alive, but the inevitable is bound to happen...

"I'm going to die," Yuu whispers just as Juri finishes the final chord. She stands up and bows and presses her lips together tightly, like forcing herself not to speak.

"Bye," she speaks in a rounded tone, controlling her emotions. Her hair hangs in a curtain over her face. He nods to her in one slow, drawn out motion.

"Goodbye...Juri," he responds. Yeah, a few months ago he'd be happy for the tapping of the guards' feet on the prison floor - but this one girl - once a week on Thursdays had taught him that life was worth living, that there was something worth living for. It was ironic he would have to die when he finally wanted to live, but he understood that he murdered three people and honestly deserved it. Juri stood where he couldn't go anyways.

The door clangs shut as the guards and Yuu exit. "No..." Juri finally lifts her head. "Don't say you're going to die, idiot," she chastises to an empty room. "I haven't loved you yet..."

As Yuu walks up the stairs to the execution area, he envisions himself hanging limply from a rope. He shakes his head and tears nearly well up. He doesn't want to die. He's scared of death. Everyone is. He's both terrified and hateful of death. There are so many things he wants to do and twenty something years aren't nearly enough. He has so many regrets, and one of them pounds in the back of his mind as he ascends the stairs one by one, to his fate.

_'Even as I walk up these stairs...I think I've always known I love you."_

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**melmel12129**


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